tisdag 16 juni 2009

Force Tracks releases the ideal meditative urban music. While ambient, drone, noise is the typical soundtrack for sinking into the void of contemplative nothingness, the dubbed-out tech-house and digital disco that Force Tracks has specialized in means meditation in movement, it means contemplating when moving through squares, stores, parks, crowds in streets, it means the increased perception of the urban landscape when riding buses and trains with headphones. House music, generally bouncing along at around 120 bpm (which equals the heart rate of an excited human body), becomes the city's pulse.

This is not the same landscape as in the futuristic, industrial decay of Detroit, nor the deep bunker dubs of Basic Channel. This is not the wastelands. It is more affirmative than critical in relation to the modern urban landscape. That comes from a technological paradigm, from the fact that we are listening to laptop-techno, dance music that puts the best elements from IDM and glitch upon a finely mechanized funk; the analog assassins have grown up. The Birth Of New Life has become adult. Some days that feels like a good thing.

måndag 15 juni 2009

I want to thank everyone who has pointed me towards this name in the past. With time you get to the important things in life - whether it be books, movies, or music - and then it all makes sense. I rarely listen to mixes (I prefer the fully physical live situation, with people moving mechanically around me; or perhaps I just have too short attention to span), but when it is put together this brilliantly, it is visionary funk in its purest, most beautiful form. It takes you places never seen, never before imagined.

fredag 12 juni 2009

Big Pun was mad charismatic, made better battle raps than anybody, managed to pull of some OK club songs, penned introspective and relationship songs without making a fool of himself, narrated great storytelling tracks, and even dropped powerful political comments. And he was the illest lyrcially, ever. He seperated himself from other technical monsters, such as Canibus, by always keeping the multisyllable madness, the scientific, hyper futuristic lingo deep within the pain and struggles of his everyday life. It is there for a reason, not for just for showing off.

Let us look at often quoted rhyme from his first album. Being in need of money, Fat Joe and Big Pun have agreed to do a quick job for the mob. Everything seemed to go be going well, but soon they will discover something about the people they left "dead in the middle of Little Italy":

With that language-stretching syllable-fest he establishes the scene, introduces two minor characters, tells us what happened to them, and what went wrong. I'm not saying he was the greatest ever. But had he been able to carry his weight and record a catalouge as deep as those of Scarface, Cormega, Ice-T, KRS-ONE, Tupac Shakur, Kool G Rap or Rakim, he might have been just that.

At times Big Pun preferred to spit that undilluted street venom so very few artists are capable of producing these days. Besides being the most technical, he was also one of the most hardcore rappers ever. Proof below; Pun at his rawest, ugliest, at his most obnoxious and ignorant.